1998 – Google was launched and included off-page optimization in their algorithm to rank web pages to avoid ranking based on only on-page optimization.

Early 2000s – As internet slowly develops, e-mail blasts were the trend, hoping to convert a handful of people to customers for every 1000 email they sent. Furthermore, Mobile Marketing became popular due to SMS (Short Message Service).

2004 – Google incorporated a wide range of factors in their algorithm to rank different web pages and became one of the top search engines along with Yahoo and Bing.

2005 – Facebook was created only for Harvard students and later spread to other colleges and high schools. Twitter was launched in 2006 followed by Linkedin.

2009 – Mobile Marketing became another option for businesses to communicate and engage with their audience such as creating applications, integrating websites to become mobile friendly and etc.

2010 – Google and Bing use Social Media mentions and activities as a factor to rank web pages. Many businesses hop on Social Media to increase its brand visibility and SEO rank.

2011 – Due to Social Media, SEO rankings become more personalized. Facebook “Likes,” Twitter Retweets/Mentions and Google’s +1 became part of the Search Engine algorithm that will affect SEO ranks.

As we can see, SEO changed A LOT throughout the years from mass targeting to personalization. NOW, how will SEO be in 10 years? Personalization will be the KEY.

The evolution of SEO will be based on TWO trending factors we see in 2012, personalized search and mobile marketing.

Search Engines can obtain user information easily. Bing can obtain Facebook shares and likes to rank your webpage. Google can include status updates and information you shared on Google+ in the SERP. Web page rankings will be different for the same keyword for each logged-in user due to their Social Media connection mentions.

Mobile Marketing is trending among many businesses in 2012 due to the additional option businesses have to engage with their audience. Furthermore, the amount of mobile users also increased due to the handiness and convenience.

2022 – No more Search Engine Optimization (SEO), it is now called Search Engine Placement (SEP).

In 2022, it is no longer optimizing websites to be crawl by Search Engines but to be mentioned and talked about among audience communities. Being the trending topic that people talk about will have a greater effect than optimizing a web page for Search Engine to crawl since how people view brands will be affected by the people they know and trust. By combining the trend of Mobile Marketing and Personalized Search Results 2012, by 2022 every action a person makes will affect the search results they get via the Search Engine.

Search Engines will collaborate with mobile companies and able to extract data from phones and use these data to re-organize the search results when users search via their Mobile Phone. A simple text conversation will have direct results on Search Engines. Factors that affect 2022 Search Engines will be length of the text conversation, frequency, time, and context of the text.

What do you think SEO will be like in 2022? Share your thoughts below =]